Conventional hockey sticks, such as those used in playing ice or street hockey, have a shaft and an adjoining blade. The shaft has a handle (being the portion that a typical player grasps during most of the course of normal use of the stick during game play) and a shank (being the portion extending below the handle to the connection point with the neck of the blade). The handle is generally rectangular usually with chamfered, bevelled or rounded corners (as the case may be—depending usually on the material of which the shaft is made and the method of its construction). The longer sides of the rectangle are those which form part of the front and rear faces of the shaft (the front face of the shaft being that face which faces in generally the same direction as the striking surface of the blade; the rear face being the face opposite the front face). The shank is also generally rectangular, however, its corners are not usually chamfered, bevelled nor rounded; or if they are, only slightly so. The shank tapers in width (between the front face and rear face) from the handle down the shaft towards the point to which the blade is attached. The shank does not usually taper in width between the left face and the right face of the shaft (the faces formed by the shorter two sides of the rectangle). The blade has a body having a striking surface and a neck extending upwards from the body that connects to the shank of the shaft. The general size and shape of hockey sticks has been relatively constant for some time.
The materials of construction of hockey sticks, however, have changed over the course of time. For example, at various times ice hockey sticks have been made having shafts of solid wood, laminated wood, fiberglass-reinforced-polymer-coated wood, fiberglass-reinforced polymers, aluminum, titanium, and carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers. Similarly, at various times hockey stick blades have been commonly made of different materials including wood and carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers. Current conventional sticks include one piece sticks having both a shaft and a blade made of a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer, the shaft typically being hollow, and the blade being solid or foam filled.
The blade of a hockey stick should be relatively strong in order for it to endure the forces developed between it and a puck and/or the playing surface. On the other hand, the blade should have a certain amount of flexibility so that the player has an acceptable level of “feel” while handling a puck or executing a shot. With the shift from wood to fiber-reinforced polymer (also known as “composite”) blades, there have come advances in blade design. In this respect, it is advantageous to have composite blade constructions for hockey stick blades that are strong, durable, lightweight and of an acceptable stiffness.
One example of a fiber-reinforced blade design can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,407,195. The drawback with some conventional fiber-reinforced polymer blade designs tends to be that the blades (and sticks) do not last as long as wooden blades did in the past. Improvements in the life, strength, and/or performance of such blades would nonetheless be appreciated by those using hockey these types of hockey sticks and blades.